Anna and the King

We watched this last night and everybody enjoyed it. The scenery and the costuming were beautiful. Made me want to go straight to Thailand, or at least eat some green curried anything.

This was so much better than The King and I. But wait, before everyone jumps all over me, and in defense of Rodgers and Hammerstein, I must confess to never having viewed the movie version, just a live production with quite possibly the worst casting gaffe ever. Yes, I am referring to Rudolf Nureyev as the King of Siam. His only intelligible lines throughout the show were, "Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." It was truly a puzzlement.

I'm just glad I didn't pay to see that one. Back in the days before children, I worked for a Broadway producer in the touring theatrical division, as a PR assistant, and that happened to be one of the many shows we did. Part of my job was setting up opening night cast parties, which sounds glamorous, but wasn't. I had to prostitute myself to the big shot restaurant and club owners, convincing them to give us a free party, with the promise of maybe some press coverage, a few comp tickets and a chance to schmooze with the stars. Oh boy! Besides a one day stint at Taco Bravo, that was the least fulfilling job I've had. Fun, but meaningless.

We had a CEO, who prided himself on being the rare top exec not requiring a personal assistant, except that when he was in New York, Houston or Miami, there was just some poor overworked girl singled out for all his personal assistant-type work. That was me: Take his car to be serviced, pick up drycleaning, talk my way past his condo security to search the suit pockets in his closet for a missing receipt, compose letters to his son and forge his name, convince an out-of-state bank to send me the contents of his departed grandmother's safety deposit box. I was good too. He would bellow for me in his office, regardless of whatever crisis I was currently attending to, and then ask me to flip his light switch on for him, while he sat back and cleaned his glasses. Instead of splitting his time equally between the three offices, he chose to spend as much time as possible in Miami because we had an office full of young, single, attractive, heterosexual women, which in that business is a little unusual.

Then there were the annual marketing meetings where all the partners from across the U.S. would get together and these were always held in January for some inexplicable reason. Where does everybody want to go in January? Yep, Florida. That was enjoyable though, and made the most of my planning gene. Unlimited budget, just make sure everybody has fun. No problem!

I sure miss the chance to see all those silly shows.